ACC neural ensemble dynamics are structured by strategy prevalence

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Abstract

Medial frontal cortical areas are thought to play a critical role in the brain's ability to flexibly deploy strategies that are effective in complex settings, yet the underlying circuit computations remain unclear. Here, by examining neural ensemble activity in male rats that sample different strategies in a self-guided search for latent task structure, we observe robust tracking during strategy execution of a summary statistic for that strategy in recent behavioral history by the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), especially by an area homologous to primate area 32D. Using the simplest summary statistic - strategy prevalence in the last 20 choices - we find that its encoding in the ACC during strategy execution is wide-scale, independent of reward delivery, and persists through a substantial ensemble reorganization that accompanies changes in global context. We further demonstrate that the tracking of reward by the ACC ensemble is also strategy specific, but that reward prevalence is insufficient to explain the observed activity modulation during strategy execution. Our findings argue that ACC ensemble dynamics is structured by a summary statistic of recent behavioral choices, raising the possibility that ACC plays a role in estimating - through statistical learning - which actions promote the occurrence of events in the environment.

Data availability

All data can be found here:https://janelia.figshare.com/articles/dataset/Dataset_supporting_main_results_of_ACC_neural_ensemble_dynamics_are_structured_by_strategy_prevalence_/21594129/1All code can be found here:https://janelia.figshare.com/articles/software/Analysis_code_supporting_main_results_of_ACC_neural_ensemble_dynamics_are_structured_by_strategy_prevalence_/21594105/1

Article and author information

Author details

Mikhail Proskurin

Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Maxim Manakov

Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, United States

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Alla Karpova

Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, United States

For correspondence
alla@janelia.hhmi.org

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5869-6336

Funding

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Alla Karpova

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Animal experimentation: All animal experiments were conducted according to National Institutes of Health guidelines for animal research and were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at HHMI's Janelia Farm Research Campus.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.